The Life and Times of Johanna Mason
by queenrichard3rd
Summary: A Johanna-centered longfic detailing the journey of Johanna Mason from her victory at the 71st Hunger Games to her participation in the Rebellion. To be updated weekly, featuring original characters, previous victors, sassy!Caesar and some JohannaxKatniss when we get there, as well as periodic Johannaxother. Books-based and Johanna-centric.
1. The Games

There are only two of them left. It's about to be over.

Truly, for the first time, she gets a sense that it will be done. _Finally._

"Think about what you want to tell your family," Blight had said. "Say it to the cameras, and I'll make sure they know."

"I don't need to say anything to them." Johanna jerked her shoulder out from under his hand. "I'm coming back."

The boy before her was small. She didn't know how he'd survived so long until she saw the sword in his hand. It was a longsword, and he had somehow found a way to sharpen it, judging by the look of the blade. She recognized him as the career from District 2. He had been in peacekeeper training. He knew how to use a baton to beat someone to death, so a sword shouldn't be much different.

The cornucopia was ablaze in the sunlight. It reflected into his eyes, not hers. He advanced a few paces, limping on his left foot. He held the sword with his left; that must be dominant.

She freed her twin hatchets from under her belt. At first, she only had a few meat cleavers from the cornucopia; they had all received little gifts from the 'feast' – where she had killed the boy from four and both tributes from one – and the cleavers and some water had been in the District Seven pack. However, after the two Careers from Two had hunted down the brute from eleven, it appeared the Capitol decided it would be worth their while to bet on her. She received a parachute with the hatchets, diamond-edged and extraordinarily deadly. They must have cost someone a pretty penny.

Blight had attached a note. _Come home._

The girl from Two had decided to split with her district partner earlier in the day – probably to avoid having to kill him at some point – and ran into Johanna's trap. It was originally for food, but she'd take it. That was when she learned that diamond could cut through bone like butter. They collected the girl in pieces.

"Buy a patriotic coffin for your shining fucking Career," she'd snarled to the cameras.

The boy before her wouldn't last long.

She faked right, and he lunged. She parried his blow with the blunt of her ax and went with a strong left. He was forced to brace himself on his bad foot and lead his blow with his right hand. She batted the sword out of his grip with her right ax and seized the opportunity to uppercut with her left.

She hit bone about halfway up his torso; it had to have been pretty thick, because her blade wouldn't shove through it. The breastbone, probably. She withdrew the weapon and he sank to his knees. Clear blue eyes looked up at her, bright as day. His mouth formed an almost disappointed frown, like a petulant child.

In the course of one measly week, she had watched twenty-two children brutally put to death. She might have been sympathetic once. Not today.

She kicked him to the ground and the cannon boomed. The hovercraft collected him.

Silence.

"People of Panem," Julius Octavius' voice roared from above, "I give you the Victor of the Seventy-First Annual Hunger Games, Johanna Mason of District Seven!" The Head Gamemaker had spoken. It was done.

She didn't know it, but somewhere in a crowded room of sponsors, Blight smiled over a glass of sparkling champagne. "I'll be damned."

Retreating to a nearby room, he called for one of the Avoxes to bring him a telephone.

"Mrs. Mason. Is Mrs. Mason back from the mill? Where is she? Go tell her. Where's John? Find him too." He laughed into the phone. "Tell them she won."

The world was flooded with a procession of tubes and machines and florescent lighting. She had refused to drop the axes when the hovercraft came to collect her. They were in a corner near her bed, bloody and disgusting and altogether out of place in this clean white corridor.

A Capitol woman, some pink-haired bitch, pushed something into her arm. "Congratulations, Johanna." She said. Her accent was almost unintelligible. "We're just going to see if we can't fix you right up. Orianus here will let you know when we touch down in the Capitol."

"_Home_," she rasped. "_I need to go home._"

"You've only a few minor injuries – gosh, what a beautiful figure you've got. Such a pretty mouth. I just might have my mouth molded after yours one day, though I'm sure _everyone_ will be doing just that come the tour! I can hardly contain myself, can you, Orianus? I'm going to tell them, yes, yes, yes, I was the one to put her back into ship-shape! Did her mentor specify any enhancements, by any chance?"

"No. He was quite forceful, but – look at this scar! This ugly thing on her left forearm. Surely he doesn't want _that_ showing, what with all of those beautiful gowns they've got lined up. Who's her stylist?"

"Lucius, the lucky girl. Have you seen what he's done with dog furs this year? Marvelous."

"Incredible, absolutely. Well, then, all that's left to do is take care of these cuts on her face – the salve should heal those before we even land – and sew up that awful gash on her leg. Laser off that scar. Maybe do something about those fingernails? I counted six broken ones."

"I should say so. Did you see her scale that cliff? My favorite part of the whole games!"

"Did you hear that?" the bitch turned her attention back to Johanna. "You're the Victor of the best games in _years._ Except maybe that beautiful boy from Four. But he was a career. You were _so_ unexpected! _I_ bet on the big farmer from Eleven – he was twice the size of everyone else – and a ten in training! What did our little victor get? A six?"

"All part of the act, I assume."

She clapped her hands together. "Just _brilliant_!"

"_I hate you_," She whispered. "_I wish you were dead._"

"What was that?" She smiled down at Johanna with horrific neon eyes.

"Blight," she mumbled, clutching the woman's arm. "I... I need to see..."

The boy stuck something metal into neck, and she fell backwards into hot white oblivion.

He was there when she awoke, this time in a different place, a different bed – somewhere glossy and expensive. The Capitol hospital, on some sort of guarded room on one of the higher floors, no doubt. The tubes and machines were gone. Blight had her hand in both of his. He smiled softly when her eyes found his.

"Congratulations, Johanna. You made us all very proud."

She smirked faintly. "Even the whore?"

"Yes, even Lucius."

She emitted a low chuckle. "That superficial asshole skins dogs."

He studied the stitching on her hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Sedated. Other than that, ready to cleave more faces. Help me sit up." He reached underneath her back, one hand on the base of her spine and the other just below her head. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and he lifted her into a sitting position. "Thanks for the axes."

"They were courtesy of Dalia Catus, the realtor from the Capitol. Apparently, she has a soft spot for you."

"A real soft spot I'd say, judging from the diamond on those blades."

"She actually had no idea about the diamond." He smiled. "I talked Lucius into parting with a few of his rings and had them fitted onto the blade by a friend."

"And who paid for that?"

"You did, actually. Quid pro quo. The deal was, in exchange for the axes, you had to win." Blight grinned. "That woman's a gift, really. There aren't too many people like that around anymore."

She clutched his hand. "_Thank you._"

He smoothed her hair. "I'm the mentor, remember?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to see my mother again. I know what I said before I went in, and I meant it, but just to know that. To know it for _sure. _That's invaluable. I could never repay you."

"A child of District Seven was reaped and is still alive. That's all the repayment I need. That's why I don't go into a drunken stupor like Haymitch Abernathy. Because I need you to survive."

Her jaw clenched. "I can't do this. I can't do what you do, not after all of this."

He squeezed her hand. "We'll talk about it later. Get some rest. This week, you've got a few important dinners. That's all. Then it's back home."

She nodded. "Home."


	2. Tribulations

Johanna nearly throws up.

The world at home did not return; only she was returning, only she was different. The girl who was tugged onto the platform by Peacekeepers in a fit of righteous fiery rage is not the same as the killer who returns with twin diamond-edged hatchets and a mind of murder.

The fear of confronting the ones who knew a different form of Johanna Mason is terrifying; she cannot play coy with them. She cannot use her victor status to intimidate them. She cannot brush off their harsh comments and stares with the thought that they are other, that they are alien; these are her people. Their words are her words.

She asks Blight if it gets any easier. He replies it doesn't, in some respects, but it becomes fairly routine in others. Her nightmares aren't graphic. They're very practical. She always wins. The fights are realistic. There are no rivers of blood or thoughts of a butchered boy who thought he was a swordsman. There are no screaming children or laughing gamemakers. Only fights. Only clear, logical battles with nameless faces. She wins in a way that makes sense. Nothing is dramatic. But they fill her with a fear so real and so primeval that it shocks her to the core, and she wakes up freezing with her back practically drenched in sweat.

It is the third night in a row she does this. They will be arriving in District Seven tomorrow. She wishes she had another day. Just one more day. Just one more lifetime to prepare to what she might say to the people who watched her slaughter other people's children, watched her go from their own fiery Johanna to the coy and coquettish girl who proved herself not only to be a master manipulator but a ferocious and vindictive gladiator. She wonders what to say to the family of her district partner. His name was Cedan. Cedan Ashben. He is dead now. She is not.

She wanders out of her room to find Blight standing at the end of the hallway. His room is in another car.

"You were screaming." He explains. "I came, but it appeared nothing was wrong." He touches her shoulder. "How are you?"

She shakes her head. "I'm not the same girl you met all those weeks ago." Her voice tremors a bit at the end. His face softens.

He decides to take a chance by pulling her into a hug. She does not bristle. "That's alright." Blight says the words softly. "You don't have to be."

* * *

Blight's games happened before Johanna was born. Now in his thirties or forties, he appears to have fought off his demons. But his world was not very much kinder when he was seventeen, not much more than hers is now.

His arena was a taiga, freezing and dense. The trees were some sort of plant mutt. Even ones with at least a twenty-inch radius seemed to collapse like paper. Whenever a tribute attempted to climb one to escape, it would immediately fall, allowing the tribute in pursuit to finish the job if any was left. It didn't matter if this tribute killed his enemy or not; the sound of the tree falling in such a quiet white space alerted every other tribute to their whereabouts. Any attempt to make a fire was basically a suicide attempt. The trees burned off fumes of thick, black smoke, easy to spot for miles.

According to her father, Blight's games were among the most boring, and most of the monotony was due to Blight's activities. Recognizing the obvious opportunity, he dug into the snow. The soil had turned out to be unnaturally soft, almost like clay, and he was able to make a sufficient burrow in less than a day. He made the entrance as small as possible and used snow to cover and reinforce it. Because of the relative inability to hide above-ground, tributes were dying like flies at the hands of a particularly wicked and vicious pack of careers; both tributes from Two, the girl from One and the girl from Four. This was before serious Gamemaker influence was very popular. Johanna's father once told her that was because Capitol citizens thought it detracted from the realistic nature of the Games. They wanted it to be real.

Blight knew he had to keep warm, but burning the wood wasn't an option – it would most likely choke him – and he certainly couldn't burn his clothes or the meager rations he had been able to snag from the Cornucopia.

He'd used his hunting knife to slice off his hair – all of it, down to where he had nicks on his scalp – and burned it periodically, regulating the temperature of the burrow and warming snow to make fresh water. Johanna remembered thinking of Blight's hair, then – almost like the Peacekeeper buzzcut – and his hair now, a trimmed, older look. She imagined him holed up in a den, slicing it off with trembling frozen fingers.

Halfway through the Games, the Head Gamemaker decided things weren't moving fast enough, so he decided to throw them a curveball by melting the snow. Without the cloud cover or the freezing temperatures, it was as arid and dry as a desert. Still, Blight kept to his burrow. When it came down to the final three, Blight was stronger and healthier than the tributes who had been suffering from exposure – the girl from Four and the boy from Two – and he easily sought them out and killed them. He smiled briefly for the Capitol before returning home. He was never part of the popular culture for any serious length of time. He was bland and vaguely disinterested, although pleasant in a polite way. Interviews were predictable. Dinners were boring. They lost interest very quickly.

Blight knew that they would not as easily lose interest in Johanna. In fact, many had already taken quite a liking to her. The price of those axes did not even begin to rival the price of her company.

He pulled all of the strings he could – forced Lucius to, as well – but nothing could be done. It happened to Finnick Odair, and it would happen to his little victor, too.

He coaxed her back to slumber with words of the old days. She fell asleep very quickly. Monotony, it appeared, was his gift.


	3. Past

She wore her simple clothes; it felt good to be out of the glittering skin-tight sequin-laced costumes of the Capitol. A simple jacket and pants would do – her old boots, worn and creased in all of the familiar ways – and her dark hair, shoulder-length and spiked in it's old pattern.

She wasn't Johanna Mason, Tribute from District Seven anymore. But she didn't want to be Johanna Mason the Victor either. She didn't care that she killed that boy – or the girl, or the tributes before them. Those were games. She couldn't kill these people to make them go away. She couldn't slice away their stares.

Blight seemed pleased at breakfast. "I'm sure you're happy to be home." He watched her push her food around her plate in silence. With a bit more of a prying tone, he tried, "I'm sure they'll also be happy to have you."

She looked up at him with glowering eyes. "What are you saying?"

"I'm telling you, as a mentor, to quit worrying. The last person they'll be judging is _you._"

Johanna leaves that particular comment alone.

* * *

When she was three years old, her father brought her out into the woods.

"When you cut down a tree, Jo," he had told her, "Always begin here." She doesn't remember the words, but she remembers the motions, careful but volatile ministrations, the concentration in her father's eyes, the smell of the pines, the way the wind was just _so. _The swing of his arms and the ripple of muscle beneath the skin – he was so young then – and the sweat on his brow.

"Why aren't you at work?" She'd asked.

"It's the day of the Reaping." He answered.

* * *

"My mother is sick," she told the Peacekeeper standing at her door.

"Orders are that all citizens report to the commons." He stared down at her with black eyes.

"She's _sick,_" Johanna persisted, furrowing her brow.

"If she doesn't report to the commons within the hour, we'll be forced to remove her."

Johanna does not remember what she said to this. Instead, she only remembers a great and intense rage. She never forgot that rage. She feels it even now.

* * *

Johanna Mason was five years old when her brother was born, and six years old when he died. She remembers it as a painful and confusing anomaly, an event that seemed to happen to _them_ more than the boy. It was as if he had just affected their lives in a brief but agonizing second, alive and then dead. Her mother was the worst. Her father moved on. She had nothing to move on from, other than the deep-rooted confusion. He'd taken her out to the woods and explained death, or at least tried to. She thought of the boy with the sword. Ironic, that she should have had death explained to her only to have grown and wrought it herself. Or perhaps that wasn't irony. Perhaps that was destiny.

* * *

She held her first ax when she was seven. Her father gave it to her. He wanted to teach her how to collect firewood on her own.

She'd aimed and thrown it against a nearby tree. It stuck. Again. It stuck. She remembers her father watching with great amusement. Quickly, he carved an X into a tree a bit farther off into the brush and told her to aim for it.

She hurled the weight of her body forward. It felt glorious. The ax stuck on the X. Her father raised his eyebrows. She felt wild.

* * *

Her mother had two more children after her and the boy; twins, when Johanna was ten. Boys.

John, for her father, and Asher, the smaller one.

Asher was always sickly. He was always smaller. She remembered his eyes, wide as saucers, as she'd mounted the stage.

"Johanna Mason and Cedan Ashben, Tributes from District Seven!"


	4. The Reception

Johanna mounts the stage.

She is in the same place that she was before; so are they. They stand in front of her, the Peacekeeper presence fading into the background amidst their large brown eyes and plain clothes, either broad-shouldered from labor in the forests or slightly bent from work in the paper mill; the sky is white, the world is bleak. The forest is a swath of green paint along the horizon line, messy and spotted as if the work of a child. The Capitol always seemed to smell like fruit and soap; this smells real. This smells like home.

The mayor, Donner, his wife and three daughters sit in simple chairs to her right. Cornelia Lolita, her escort, stands in a bright orange getup, dress and tights and all, hair to the ceiling with sunset-colored curls and heels with fabric that speaks eerily of dog fur. She's managed to draw on her eyebrows into a perpetually surprised fashion, teeth glimmering in the white light as she announces with egoistic satisfaction, "Please welcome the first female Victor from District Seven, Johanna Mason!"

She doesn't smile. She cannot. They clap unenthusiastically. Their eyes speak of sympathy. Blight was right. They are not disgusted with _her._

They do not want to clap for this. They do not want to give a show of appreciation for their gut-wrenching acidic anticipation, for their anguish no doubt at Cedan's death, for the nights they returned to their homes waiting for the words, the scream, the cannon that would tell them that they had once again sacrificed two of their children to the senseless and sacrilegious Games. Instead, they sacrificed just one. They will not clap for this sadistic mercy. They will not clap, for the shame.

She remembers the feel of Cedan's hand, when their fingers interlocked, when they were reaped and they stood together, united in fate. The stage suddenly feels very empty.

Be as this may, she does not wish he were here instead of her. She does not regret her manipulation and murder. She said she was coming home. She has.

She spots her family in the third row. Her father's hair has grayed, though he is clean shaven. He is built like an ox, half a head taller than the other men. He will be proud of her.

Her mother is glorious. She has always been glorious. Her eyes speak of indignation. To her side are the twins. Asher is still much smaller than his brother. He is smiling. John seems to be in shock.

She speaks briefly, for the cameras, of her joy at being home. Of her thanks to the Capitol for their hospitality. _Panem today, Panem tomorrow, Panem forever._

Afterwards, she is told she has six weeks before the beginning of the Victory tour. _A little time to whet the Capitol's appetite,_ Blight adds. She is given time to say goodbye to Lucius and Cornelia. Her styling team does not wait – she hated them too, so it's really for the better. Cornelia starts to tear up about how Johanna is her most prized accomplishment and how she will go home and speak volumes of her intelligence and bravery. In six weeks, she will be forced to rely on Cornelia again, so Johanna in turn manages to look as if holding back tears as she hugs the woman's shoulders, telling her she couldn't have had a better escort, her planning made all the difference, she was an inspiration to them all. Cornelia looks nostalgic and pleased with herself as she walks away.

Lucius smiles his crooked smile. His hair is bright pink with a few strands of blue, wavy with a perfect front curl, sprayed to concrete-hardness. His eyeliner is blue, as is his blush. His outfit is strangely masculine, what with the eccentric curves and day-glow colors. She supposes that's the sort of thing they extoll him for in the Capitol. He puts a hand on her shoulder. "I'll be missing you, my dear."

"Try not to skin any dogs while I'm gone?"

"As long as you promise to brush your hair every few days, at least."

She gives him a sneer. He winks and makes his way to the train. Before he boards, he calls, "If you don't leave me _something_ to work with, I'll be forced to tie you into that wig again."

As soon as the train departs, she is ushered back into a car and dragged back to the Victor's Village, where Blight explains that the cameras have absolutely insisted on getting a few shots of her greeting her new home. She tries to look at least marginally thankful. They leave very quickly. Everyone departs, and she is finally left alone.

"I'm going to see my family." She tells Blight. She walks out her door and pushes past him, looking confused on her front step.

"Johanna, it's past curfew. We should both be inside now. I was just coming to check-"

"What are they going to do, shoot me?" She laughs bitterly. "I am Johanna Mason," - she puts on her best Capitol accent - "_the first female tribute from District Seven! _They know that. Let them come."

She makes her way home in silence. The Peacekeepers pretend not to notice. She makes eye contact. _Let them come. What could they do? They already tried to kill me, the bastards. _She feels the power in those words and thinks of the butchered Career girl. _They already tried to kill me._

But in all of her hatred, she cannot deny the truth of what she has done, what she is doing. She walked onto the stage, walked through the arena. Now she is walking home. Not the same girl they once knew, but better than a shadow of grief and a picture on the wall.

_Mother, father, brother. How I have waited for you._

Her mother opens the door. She stares at her for half a second before pulling her into a warm embrace. Johanna feels a warm hand smoothing her hair. She tries not to cling. She clings, nonetheless. She is graced with her mother's smell. It reminds her of childhood.

When she is released, she sees her father towering over them both with large, brown eyes, like that of a buck. He smiles. "Johanna."

John watches her with joy, yet apprehension. Asher smells sweet as he hugs her around her middle. He looks as if he's going to cry. She begs him not to cry. He does anyway. In between sobs, he wretches, "I really – I really missed you. Don't leave again, ever. Okay?" His large brown eyes are swimming with tears. His voice is small. "Okay?"

She knows not to promise him this. "Okay."

* * *

She dines with them, though she refuses to take even a small portion of their food – not after the bounty she's received in the Capitol.

She sits across the table from her father. "You know," She says to him, "They've given me one of those houses. In the Victor's Village. They're huge. Two stories. Something like four or five bedrooms. It's all furnished. Everything's paid for." She doesn't quite know how to say it. "You should... I mean, do you want to maybe move there? Permanently? We could live together – it would be closer to town, too – and to the mill. It's gated, and there would be a yard-"

"Johanna." Her father states calmly, "Thank you. But we're content here."

"That's ridiculous. We're crammed into two bedrooms. We have this opportunity-"

Her mother looks frank. "I'm not excited about taking a Capitol handout. That doesn't thrill me." She reaches for Johanna's hand. "I'm so happy you came back." She squeezes her hand. "It doesn't matter where we are. As long as we're together."

Johanna snatches her hand back. "This _isn't _a Capitol handout! _I won it!" _The ferocity in that statement seems to shock them into silence. She slides out from her seat at the table. "I won it. I took it from them. I put on their costumes and danced their dance and I won. Why can't it be worth something?" She makes to exit to the balcony. "I want it to be worth something for us. Something _real._"

She sits on the steps and watches the stars shine. It is the first time she saw them. In the arena, they were fake projections. In the Capitol, the night sky was black.

* * *

**Hello all! Just wanted to beg you real quick to PLEASE review. Seriously they give me the motivation to keep going. If you don't happen to have the time I completely understand! Thank you so much for reading. -QR3**


	5. The Wicked

Blight was married once, they say, sometime about five years after he won his games. Johanna had heard that she died in some tragic accident, though her father seemed to be sure that she left him.

"Why?" She remembers asking.

"Blight is a kind man, but I doubt he's very easy to live with. Victors are survivors, Johanna. That's what they're good at. That's why they win. The man who comes out of the Hunger Games is not a master of compromise, but persistence." She remembers his deep brown eyes staring back into hers. "Victors are... a different kind of animal from the rest of us."

She does not have to sit on the porch for very long until she feels the floorboards creak from a foreign weight. It is him, undoubtedly; too heavy to be anyone else.

He stoops down to sit beside her. She doesn't know how to respond.

"Johanna." He speaks frankly. "I denied your request because I believe it's best for your mother and the boys if things return to some semblance of normalcy."

She chuckles dryly. "Normalcy." After a pause, she asks, "Did you watch the Games?"

"Yes." Her father admits flatly. "As much as we could catch in between work. Your brothers didn't. Your mother refused to allow it." He pauses. "You were very good."

"Then you know how ridiculous it is," She accuses, "To even begin to pretend that there will _ever_ be even an _inkling_ of hope for normalcy. Nothing will ever be the same again." She looks at him with fiery eyes. "Am I the same person you said goodbye to in the Capitol building? Am I really?"

"No," he answers. "I suppose not."

"Then there's your answer."

"Not quite. You may not be the same, but you're still my daughter." He stands, walks a few paces out, facing the forests. His shoulders are broad in the moonlight. She supposes she is just as strong, in a different way.

"I don't want you to forget that you're still Johanna. Maybe you've changed. But we can get past it. We can always mend ourselves, even after the greatest of injuries."

"Do you think the girl from Two can mend _herself_?" She doesn't know why she's gone for the jugular, but she has. Because she knows there is no other way to communicate it to him. Because she knows her mother already understands; her mother, who was built from fire, who was as fierce and impenetrable as her diamond-edged hatchets – who is not out here trying to convince her to be the same, because she knows not in her heart but her mind that it is impossible. John Mason does not understand. His son with the same name does, and that is why he stares at her with wide hesitant eyes. Because he recognizes that the sister who left is not the sister who came back, that the girl who covered herself in innocent flowery dresses and cried to Caesar Flickerman in the Capitol and allowed him to dry her dainty cheeks with his powder-blue handkerchief as Capitol citizens' neon mascara ran down their own faces in pity, is not, _is not, _the killer who darted across to the Cornucopia and made away with five throwing knives that found their place in the necks of five tributes, is not the warrior who painted a trail of blood with matching meat cleavers, is not the spider who waited in the tree below her trap for the girl from Two, is not the gladiator who kicked a dying boy to the ground and felt relief at the sound of his cannon.

"I'm not glad the girl had to die, but-"

"I _am!" _Johanna cries with conviction. "I am thankful _every day_ that she's dead." Her voice drops to a low flatness that shocks even her. "I am thankful that _all of them_ are dead. It was me or them. I chose me," she is shocked that her tears dare betray her; they fall without thought of her pride. "I chose me. I can't come back from that. I'll never be able to come back from that."

He looks back at her with an expression she can't quite place; somewhere between sadness, pity and shock.

"I have to go."

She's halfway back to the Victor's Village before the tears begin to fall in earnest, before she cannot believe that the people she came back for are those who she now walks away from.

She is different. But she is not sorry.

Johanna finds herself in pieces at Blight's door.

He opens the door in his black robe, the one she recognizes from the train. He appears surprised.

She looks up at him, lost. "Am I horrible?"

Without a word, he pulls her into his arms. She wonders if it's true, that he was hard to live with. After a moment, she finds she doesn't care. He's comforting and unassuming and gentle. Her arms lock around his waist. He pulls her past the doorstep and into the warmth, quietly shutting the door behind her. She knows he does not grieve because she is not the same. She knows he does not judge the way that she has transformed, or what she has transformed into.

She does not apologize for not being the same. He never expected her to be.

Blight strokes her hair. "No." He says calmly. "You were never horrible."


	6. The Water of the Womb

It is barely two days before Asher appears on her doorstep.

_Don't shut them out, Johanna._ Blight had said. _It's not worth it._

She looks quizzical. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

He shrugs. "They're doing the evaluations, and we had to leave in the morning anyway. So I came to see you!" A bright smile illuminates his features.

She can't help but smile back at him. "Come on," she opens the door further, stepping aside. "I'll give you a tour."

Most of the house is dark; granted, she hasn't taken the time to even explore it herself; most of it has been spent brooding in the yard, trying to understand what she might say to her father and the complications that come with it.

He is interested in everything; every crevice, every embellishing detail, even the small Capitol insignias inlaid in gold at the head of all the beds. "Like a flag," he says, tracing the pattern with his fingers. She smiles in accordance, but knows what they truly are – a reminder. _We are always watching. _The gold bird reflects back at her, and she imagines Snow, in an empty office, staring at it with hard eyes. _You have not left the Games._

Haymitch Abernathy tried to hide in a bottle, Finnick Odair under Capitol bedsheets, Annie Cresta within the deep recesses of her own mind; Blight tries to change the future as if to change the past. What will she do?

Johanna watches as Asher studies the silver-stained doorknob before venturing into the closet. He touches one of the dresses – not hers, but things they stocked for the promos before the Victory Tour – and brings it to his cheek. He looks back at her in awe. "A whole room, just for clothes?"

"It's stupid, I know." She admits. "But I guess it's nice sometimes."

She leads him out into the backyard, watches him climb the trees and hears his ringing laughter. He is only seven years old.

Later, he asks, "Will you come back to the Tree with me?"

"Yes." Johanna answers. "Of course."

They walk in silence across the deserted streets of District Seven; all but the elderly are either at work in the forests or the paper mill. Asher strides before her without reservation; he twists and twirls, kicking a rock down the empty road and looking back at her with gleaming brown eyes. The Peacekeeper presence is still just as thick, and when they turn to observe her she hugs him just a bit closer to her side.

_Let them come, _she thinks, _but not for him._

When they reach the Tree, the sun is just beginning it's descent, reflecting across the sap-stained wooden panels. It's old, she will admit that, but the boards are as thick and timeless as when her father first cut them.

She tests the planks before she lets him climb, despite his insistence that he has done so dozens of times; they appear to hold steady, so she allows it.

The inside of the Tree is stale, overgrown; the ivy that coats the trunk has also made its way into the window. One of the walls is missing, as she remembers, so she sits with her legs swinging over the side and watches the trees. He joins her eventually – when he is done with his dutiful inspection of each board – and gathers down beside her, entwining his arms with one of her own, head against her shoulder. She looks down at him. It has never struck her before how closely he resembles her, with his nose with the slight upturned curve, the perfect bow of the top lip of his mouth, the wide brown eyes. When he grows older, he will not share her hardness; but what he lacks in deliberation he will make up in grace.

* * *

Blight requests he dine with her, and she does.

"Have you thought about what I said?" He asks, pouring himself a glass of wine.

"I guess." She answers blandly. Smiling, she holds her glass out. "Wine?"

He gives her a disapproving frown and instead fills her cup with cider. She grumbles at him, pouting.

His face quickly returns to seriousness. "I do mean it, though. You need to go talk to your father."

"Since _when_ did you care so deeply about my personal relationships?"

"I don't. I care about _you._"

On this, she cannot argue.

"Fine." Johanna sighs. "Tomorrow, I'll go talk to him. I'll go try."

Blight looks back at her with sympathetic eyes. "Don't be nervous. You fought for them. You and I both know that. They'll fight for you, too. Just as hard."

She imagines Asher as a young man, compassionate and free and gentle, timeless and steady and tall as the Tree. She sees the shadow of his wide shoulders beneath the fall of an orange sunset, glowing and wild and soft. She sees herself in his eyes, her mother in his hands, her father in his heart.

_Mother, father, brother. How I have waited for you._


	7. The Blood of the Covenant

That night, she goes to see _her._

The world did not stop for them like they thought it would; their touches did not slow time, their kisses did not bring respite to the suffering they felt. It was only for a moment that they would experience it, the subtle pieces of their lives that would seem to stretch on for hours. Her fingers threaded, tangled in Johanna's hair as she writhed like a glittering gold goddess beneath her; Johanna would smile, watching her, eyes wild, lips wet, pinning her and devouring her like a gladiator.

She always knew Johanna would win, even if Johanna herself didn't know it. But when she stepped into the arena, it became very obvious that she knew all along.

She doesn't hesitate like Johanna's mother. She flings open the door and grabs her, clings to her, falls to her knees with sobs of relief, of heartache, of pain. The moon shines low behind them.

Johanna holds her gently, as she knew she would, murmuring soft words of comfort into her ear as she runs her hand down the trail of her spine. The night is cold. "Come on," Johanna urges gently, kissing the side of her head. "Let's get inside."

Johanna wraps a blanket from the cupboard around her shoulders and pours them both mugs of tea. It's bland, mostly water, but she feels like fire so it's at least appropriate.

It isn't long before she begins to cry once more, tears streaming to a chorus of incoherent sobs of _I knew you'd be back, _and _I love you, _and _Don't leave me._

And then she pulls Johanna into a kiss, searing and fierce and possessive, not necessarily an admittance of doubt or a reinforcement of commitment, neither here nor there; but it speaks to her anguish, to her fears; that for a brief moment in time, no more brief than they knew to expect, the only piece of herself she had ever been able to give away was thrust into the arena. Johanna had gone into the games with half of her heart and won both a crown and a life together, with a simple swing of her ax.

And once again she feels as though she is the mistress of nature itself, a force so primeval and unpredictable and _strong_ that it could vanquish their very existence. She feels the wild in Johanna's mouth and feels it's strength in the fingers that dig into her hip, the unpredictability in the softness of the hand on her cheek and the instinct in her eyes.

They barely make it to the bed. Johanna rips her clothes off, a golden gladiator once more, devouring, conquering, making known what is hers, what was always hers. She pulls her head down to her breast and once again entangles her fingers in Johanna's dark hair, closes her eyes, mouth open, panting, as she feels her presence again, a truth unknown to the liars in the Capitol that _this_ is in fact what Johanna Mason is, this sexy, predatory, possessive creature, this loyal and loving woman, this executioner, this beast, this force of nature which tears away her modesty and brings her quaking to the pinnacle of her physical truth.

"Say my name," she pants. It is meant to be sexual but it feels like a wager.

"Ariadne." Johanna breathes. Spotting the look in her eyes, she stops her ministrations and leans down, planting soft, chaste kisses on her lips, the line of her jaw, her neck. "Ariadne, Ariadne, Ariadne."

* * *

She burrows herself in Johanna's embrace, head resting just below her collarbone, body curled inwards with her hands clutching at Johanna's shirt. Johanna entwines her arms protectively around her, pulling the blankets around them just so in a cocoon-like embrace.

When she awakes – not for the first time – shaking for fear of Johanna's demise, her gladiator is patient, gentle, whispering into her hair with words velvet and dark. Ariadne listens to her heartbeat, slow and steady, the one truth she has to prove that, in fact, Johanna Mason is still with her.


	8. Masters of Persistence

"I hope you won't tell her I was here. I suppose I was clear enough when we spoke earlier, but I'd like to make sure." Lucius takes a less-than-tentative sip from his glass. "If you play games with me, Blight, we won't be able to have any more agreements."

Blight's face is a bland mask, a plain and uninterested façade. "Of course, old friend. No games."

Lucius smiles, and twists a ring off one of his thumbs, watching the colors change in the lamplight. "The helpless act was good. Especially when she turned deadly. That was very smart – after all, it let her win, didn't it?" He smirks dryly. "But it's not going to do any good now. She's very pretty. The helplessness made her vulnerable. The unexpected ferocity made her sexy. That's what she is to them, at least for now. Sexy."

Blight looks away, uncomfortable.

Lucius laughs, showing the white diamonds encrusted in his teeth. "Oh, please. Don't tell me you don't see it. Those big, brown eyes? High cheekbones? Thick brows? God, her mouth alone is some sort of scientific wonder. If I didn't know she grew up in this rat's nest, I'd say it was Capitol-engineered. Those lips? The way she smiles? She sort of looks like the classic actresses, from those ancient films of the old regime. Hundreds of years ago. Vivien Leigh? Elizabeth Taylor? Ever heard those names? I'd guess not." He takes another sip, this one more generous than the last. "That curved little nose alone probably would have done her in."

Blight rubs his temples. "How do you know any of this is actually true, and not – not conjecture? Not… so opinionated it's false?"

"I'm Lucius Sulla, Blight. The designer? Remember?" He waves his hand in front of Blight's face, as if to wake him from a trance. Blight's jaw tightens, and he retracts his hand. "Oh, relax. Listen to me. I know what they like. That's my job. That's been my job. I guess as to what they'll enjoy. I've got a pretty impressive track record of guessing correctly, as you can see. They like her."

"What do your contacts say?"

"That the bidding hasn't really begun, but there are already patrons placing bets."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that the starting price will probably be high. So your little plan – which was stupid anyway – is obviously already off the table."

Blight sighs. "It wasn't stupid."

"Of course it was!" Lucius begins to guffaw in earnest. "You must be joking. You thought you could just buy up all of her time, every night, and suddenly they would just move on to the next shiny toy? Finnick Odair can only warm so many beds, my friend, and the next Games are months away. The Capitol is a city of tyrants and fools, and believe me, the fools are numerous and infantile. That's why I make money." Lucius empties his glass, and subsequently makes a show of pouring himself another. "Good food, fancy clothes, strong drinks, exotic sex – not necessarily in that order – and the Hunger Games. That's their life. That's what they know. They love it. And you know what happens when you deny them any one of those things? Of course you do. They want it more than they did before, and they won't rest until they have it. And now there's six weeks before the tour, and an entire month of touring and parties after that, not to mention all the time it will take before the press is done with her, at least initially. That's a very long time for a population of people used to immediate gratification. That's probably the longest they wait for anything."

"So we just give up, then." Blight says dryly. "We throw her to the dogs."

"No." He councils. "You feed them something they don't want to eat."

Blight looks up at him. "What, then? A tragic accident, her face forever marred? An infectious disease – don't touch, or you'll die for sure?" He sighs. "Why does Snow want this, anyway?"

"It's simply financial, from what I've heard. The Games are very profitable. As you know, Capitol citizens don't pay taxes, and of course the Districts provide materials which equate to their fair share of the bargain. Free labor, so to speak. So when the Capitol needs a little extra, they either give Caesar a call and turn up press attention on the Games, or they gauge the relative marketability of the victor."

"Marketability."

"Yes, in many sorts of ways. They sold action figures of Gloss, the Victor from One, for instance. Those sold very well. They did those sorts of things for a while, until they figured out something else. People would pay a lot of money if a victor would come dine with them. If a person wanted to have a particularly entertaining party, they would pay for the presence of a Victor. A lot of people did that, for a long time – I met Enobaria from Two at a party once. Until that escalated, of course, in the natural way. After all was said and done, they had established a perfectly civil way for citizens to pay for the pleasure of a Victor's intimate company. A little betting system, based on hours. Thousands and thousands rolled into the Capitol's pockets. Then Finnick Odair came along, and they were drowning in money from his cavorting. Once, they were actually able to sell him for six hundred grand. For one night. At that rate, the kid could have paid for an entire arena in a couple of months."

"What will they pay for her?" Blight watches him with unforgiving eyes. "After all, that was the agreement. The information."

Lucius huffs. "Right. As we speak, the betting has begun at fifty-thousand, although that will easily escalate. The big players aren't interested in under-the-table auctioneering because they know it only drives up the price. They'd like to walk in when the real show starts and get her for a deal, but since she's so interesting, they probably won't be able to do that anyway. So, from what I've been able to tell, they've been paying certain people off for favors, to get themselves higher on the waiting list. I'm not sure how well this will work. They've never done it this way before, not even with Odair. After Snow's party at the end of the tour, the betting will already be done. That's when they'll come to you, and tell you. They'll leave it up to you to tell her. And from then on, they'll put her up in some fancy place in the Capitol and a car will show up ever so often for her. When the Games start, she'll be off-limits again, as a mentor. Then, once they're tucked neatly into the arena, she's game again, especially after both of the tributes are dead. I have a few friends who say that they might be able to pull some strings, but it looks unlikely. I'm sorry, my friend, but she's a very shiny toy."

Blight sighs. "Keep pulling your strings for me, will you?"

Lucius raises his glass and touches it to Blight's. "Of course."

After he leaves, Blight briefly contemplates why he subjects himself to hearing things he already knows spat back at him in the haughty, shrill cry of the Capitol accent. The answer is simple, of course; Blight is not a fool.

He knows that it's better if Lucius feels as though he's doing something _for_ him rather than _with_ him, at least where the Games are concerned. He needs an ally, and Lucius has always been one for collecting favors.

He also knows that he can never allow her to become some sort of Capitol-engineered prostitute. It's Johanna Mason they're talking about.

* * *

It is as if no time has passed. It is as if she hasn't been on this walk before, a different person even then, wading through the cool night air to the father who was incapable of comprehending the finality of her change. It is as if his first dance with her fatal blood was recital; now, it is opening night, and the show fast approaches. She can only hope that he might learn his steps.

Her mother opens the door, a picture of déjà vu. She draws open the door, asks Johanna to sit, sits beside her, puts a hand on her cheek, asks her to be kind. _He's having a hard time. He's drawn between his pride and his anguish. _

Johanna looks up at her. She remembers when her mother was younger, when her eyes were brighter. But her youth came with ignorance; she didn't know, she didn't know anything. She would be the first to admit this; that the Hunger Games were a fact of life until a warm day in a small bed, the softness of the sheets beneath inexplicable pain, the reassuring weight of a small baby girl in her arms, watching this child sleep through silent, thankful tears. Until the child grew larger, until she toddled across the floorboards to her father, until her spiked tresses of dark hair grew long enough to braid, until she was able to dress herself for her first day of school. Until _read me a story_, until _I want a treehouse, Daddy,_ until _I drew a picture at school_, until _Why don't you have to work today?_

And the pain of such a binding and protective love of another child, just as pink and soft and warm as the first, torn apart by the finality of death. She remembers this without fail, as plain to see as a scar, pale and torrent like a ghost, and then she looks on her small daughter and wonders, wonders what it would be to see her thrown into the Capitol's worst game. She remembers that pain and then imagines the magnification of having to watch not a still and silent death, but a murder, loud and torturous and _long._ And that pain gave way to bitter hatred. No longer could she pass a Peacekeeper without wanting to spit in his face. No longer could she watch two children walk up the steps to their death without wanting to snatch them both back, shouting for action, for revolution, for _anything._ For reparation, for vengeance against the people who made her watch the sons and daughters of her neighbors sacrificed against their will, who made her unwillingly _thankful_ to watch it and be sure that it was not her children on that stage. To be thankful for the deaths of the children of her friends. To feel that, to feel that disgust.

And then, despite her anger, her daughter mounted the stage. Her daughter entered the arena. Her daughter came back.

Johanna knows who Anne Mason is, and why her eyes are a little less bright than when she was young and oblivious and foolish.

She feels her mother's hands through her hair, her soft words: _Try to help him understand. He wants to. But some things are like this. Try to help him understand that once a tree is cut down, there is no cobbling it back together again. _

And then the reassurances: _You are perfect. You are strong and intelligent and beautiful. It's okay to be different than before. After all, no one ever stays the same._

She sits on the porch steps and waits for her father.

He sits beside her, eventually.

She tells him that she is sorry. He tells her not to be.

She explains, with a soft but commanding tone, that she has changed. That the Games have changed her. Not damaged, just changed. It is a half-truth. He accepts it wholly.

He says he will think about the house.

* * *

Johanna goes to Blight as the sun is setting, and recounts the details.

"I'm glad." He says. He places a plate of food in front of her. "Please, eat something."

She picks at it. Behind her, the holoprojection is on mute. "Our dear friends in the Capitol playing anything interesting?"

He shrugs. "Reruns of the Games. They're trying to keep people in the mood, for the Tour. They can only play Finnick Odair's so many times, though, so I think they've switched to Cashmere's – the Victor from One, Gloss' sister."

Some time later, Johanna glances back. Playing on the screen in multi-pixel definition is an unforgettable scene; a giant from Eleven digging his knives into the soft engineered rock of the sheer cliff face, trying to climb closer to victory. Just yards above him, a girl with a ragged breath and spiked hair, crying out as her fingernails split from her hands as she desperately tries to claw her way to safety. Blood running down her hands, the camera pushes in on her face as she makes it to the top, flipping herself up and onto solid ground. Sweat pours into her eyes as she gasps for breath, hands covered in blood and dust. She forces herself to sit up, to grab a nearby rock and fling it down, bludgeoning the giant and sending him to his death below. They cut to Caesar Flickerman, his eyes ecstatic, mouth open in awe. "_What an amazing scene! Just brilliant! Ladies and Gentlemen, no longer can we ignore this fierce contender, Johanna Mason of District Seven!"_

Blight looks up, first at her face and then at the scene playing out, and hits a button on the remote so fast she barely catches the motion. The projection goes blank and disappears.

"I'm sorry," He runs a hand through his hair. "I don't know why that's even on. I'm sorry."

She purses her lips. "What did you think, when you saw that?" Her eyes meet his.

He looks away. "I thought, '_she's alive'._ That's all I could think. All I could say. I told myself that for hours."

She waits. "We're going to have to do that again, aren't we? We're going to have to choose one." It's not a question so much as a statement. "Did you choose me?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever think about him?"

"No. Do you?"

"Sometimes."

He nods. "I used to think about my partner, too. When I felt the worst. She died in the bloodbath. She was very small. I think she was barely thirteen."

She imagines Blight, a teenager again, in his hovel in the snow. "Do they ever replay your games?"

He laughs. "Those weren't fun for anyone."


	9. Theseus and the String

Ariadne feels the bed dip under a foreign weight, the moonlight peering softly through the thin curtains.

Johanna knows she is awake. "Ariadne."

She hums contentedly, pulling Johanna down into the bedcovers.

"Come back with me," Ariadne hears her murmur. "To the Village, for tonight. It's so cold in here."

She wants to deny it, but she can already feel Johanna's fingers trailing the gooseflesh on her arm. "Okay."

The Village house is dark, but Johanna manages to wind her way down the corridors and find a light. It's warmer than her own home, bigger as well. Two stories – not just a sleeping loft – with more bedrooms and bathrooms and windows than Ariadne cares to count.

Johanna returns moments later, having illuminated the entire house with the press of a button. As she leads her up the stairs, Ariadne glimpses what she must have found – some sort of touchpad, glowing blue in the hallway – and stares at it in awe.

The staircase isn't like the ladder she climbs to get to her loft. It's bigger, right in the middle of the main room, with real handrails and seemingly floating steps leading to a highly decorated open space. A _second_ living room?

Why?

Then again, the Capitol and its illogical splendor has always confounded her.

Johanna grasps Ariadne's hand in her own and leads her down another hall, this one much more spacious than the last. They pass some sort of black and gold wallpaper, sleek and shining – until she reaches out her hand to touch and realizes it isn't _wallpaper_ at all – instead, real obsidian tile inlaid with gold. On the _wall._ She recognizes the Seal of Panem - tiny round things pressed into the gold on each stripe – and wonders if they've really put it everywhere. Even at the bottom of the staircase, the Seal was painted into the floor.

She is led into a larger room – the master bedroom, no doubt – and she is shocked at the sheer size. It's as spacious as the living room, a bed meant for a giant, a walk in closet, gold-tiled windows, black velvet curtains, wood floors stained dark, deep violet rugs thicker than her own winter bedsheets. The ceiling is high, and the finishes are encrusted with deep golden curls.

"Was everything like this in the Capitol?" she asks.

"No," Johanna laughs. "This is their cheap shit. After all, who ever expected anyone from Seven to win the Games?"

The bed is soft and welcoming, the sheets some engineered form of silk. She wraps her arms around Johanna's waist, head on her chest. The moon peers out from behind the black curtains.

Johanna wraps an arm around her shoulders. "I have to leave in a few weeks."

"The Tour."

"Yeah. The Tour."

"Do you just…" She looks up at Johanna, turning onto her stomach. "Sort of… wave? Smile? Or do you apologize?"

She shrugs. "I'm not sure. Not like I've done this before."

"What did Blight say?"

"Nothing, besides when it starts." Her hand leaves Ariadne's back to rub her own forehead. "Something's wrong. He's avoiding the subject."

"Hey," she reaches a hand to stroke Johanna's cheek. "Listen. Blight knows what he's doing, okay? He does. If there's something that he's not mentioning, that means it's probably not that important, right? In a few weeks, the whole team and that Capitol woman will be here again. She runs a tight ship. Nothing's happening on that Tour that hasn't already been planned in detail. No surprises. Not for them, not for Blight, not for you. After all, how many years in a row have they done this?"

"Seventy." She is momentarily silent. "Seventy years. Twenty-four tributes. How many…"

"It doesn't matter." Ariadne strokes her face, tipping her chin up to face her. "There's nothing anyone can do. Listen. You're safe now. No more reapings. No more Games. I'll be eighteen before the next one, and I'm only putting my name in once. Your brothers are too young, and now you've got this house and the earnings. They won't need to take tesseraes either. Just once a year, you go out, you say hello, you give our tributes the best damn advice you can, okay? Then you come back. You come back, and you play with your little brothers, and you go felling with your father, and we'll go for walks and smell the pines and have mind-blowing sex. And it'll be alright." She presses her lips to Johanna's forehead. "It will all be alright."

She grasps onto Ariadne's frame, as if a life buoy in a turbulent ocean.

* * *

Johanna dreams of the arena.

It is snowing. The pines are thick and dark. She can see her breath in front of her.

"Try rubbing your hands together, to make a fire." She looks to her left to find Blight, seventeen years old, huddled in a mass of jackets and gloves and woolen hats. "Come on, don't stare at me." He gestures at a pile of sticks in front of her. "Do it! I'm freezing! Come on, come on!"

She tries, but when she smacks her hands together, only small sparks fly off, and they are too small to create flame. Instead, they bury themselves into the snow and die.

"I thought you said you were going home." He says angrily. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Cedan Ashben, face-down in a pile of red snow.

"Well, you're not telling me how to do it!" She retorts. Her lips feel numb. "You're not telling me anything!"

"You should know! I thought you said you'd done this seventy times!"

"I don't know how to do this! What do you think I am, the girl on fire?"

"You could be. But you won alone."

"What does that mean?"

"You saved _yourself._ And that's what you'll be doing, for the rest of your life."

She reaches out and shoves him into the snow. "I'm saving _your_ goddamn life right now, Blight!"

When he cobbles back to his feet, it is Asher staring back at her. He is fifteen years old. "Jo." He speaks slowly. "Welcome back."

An arrow buries itself in his chest, and he falls to the ground with a _thud, _muffled by the snow. She rushes to him, remove the arrow from his heart, but all she finds in the wound are rose thorns, too many to count.

She turns on her heels, digging into the snow, and searches for the culprit. She searches until she can no longer feel her legs. She never finds him.

She feels Blight's hand on her shoulder once more. "I'm sorry."

"Don't say you understand." She pushes him away, trying in vain to stand on icy legs. "You don't understand. You won, too. You had her, but she _left_ you."

He sits beside her, and begins to saw off his hair.

* * *

She finds herself on the train again. Cornelia Lolita has placed a schedule in front of her, but she is unable to decipher the words.

"Twelve o'clock, we go to Twelve."

"I heard it burned down." Johanna protests.

"No, no. Not yet, anyway." Cornelia turns the page to reveal a map. She points with an orange fingernail to District Four. "And here's Finnick."

"What does he have to do with anything?"

"He's a fisherman. With a trident."

Johanna blinks. "Are you high?"

Blight enters through the north doors, wine in hand. Lucius follows, looking pleased with himself. "Don't worry, my dear, no one keeps dogs as pets anymore. Oh, look at this." He strides over to the map, pointing to the Capitol. "Here's where Snow lives. He holds his party at the end of the Tour right here, every year." Lucius leans down to her ear and covers his mouth as if to tell her a secret, and whispers, "He's from the Capitol."

"Don't tell her something you haven't told me!" Blight protests.

"Well, who else is going to tell her? You never tell her anything." Cornelia quips.

Blight sighs. "It wasn't the right time."

* * *

Johanna returns to her sleeping car. In the middle of her bed, Ariadne waits, naked and shining. They've made up her face with a multitude of blacks and greys and golds.

"What if my mother sees us?" Johanna asks.

"She'll know, either way. I thought you said she never ignores anything anymore."

Johanna shrugs. "You want me to ignore everything."

Ariadne raises her arms over her head and smiles. "But don't I make it easy?"

Johanna lays beside her and stares up at the black ceiling.

"Why is your brother called John?" Ariadne muses.

"Because my father's name is John."

"What if your father's name was Johanna?"

She laughs. "My father's name isn't Johanna."

"But say it were. And say your brother were called Johanna. And then, they would call you something different. Maybe they'd call you Ariadne. And then, I would be Ariadne too. Maybe we never would have kissed. Maybe it would have been too weird, having the same name and everything. And we would have never fallen in love." She sighs. "It's the little things that change destinies."

* * *

A bit later, she says, "I keep thinking about Blight's games."

"Go watch them." Ariadne says.

"I've already seen them."

"Well, they've got his Tour on tape, if that's what you're wondering."

"Where?"

"In your house, hidden in the cabinet. They've got all sorts of shit hidden all over your house, if you would care to look instead of babysitting Asher and fucking me all the time."

"Where's the train headed right now?"

Ariadne frowns. "District Twelve. Can't you smell the flames?"

* * *

Johanna is awake. Her hands are clammy.

She gently frees herself from Ariadne's embrace and makes her way out of the room and down the stairs. Under the holoprojector, in a large cabinet, she finds them: Games One through Seventy, from the Reapings to the Tour. Below them are other films – Capitol-made flicks about hopeless love and parties, historical documentaries depicting the honorable Capitol soldiers fighting to preserve Panem during the Dark Days, tearing through hordes of thieving, murderous rebels. They've left her an entire collection. There's even a documentary on Snow. She's heard of this one; it was required viewing at school when her father was a boy. Allegedly, half of the movie depicts a handsome Snow rooting out corruption and kissing babies and personally thanking citizens. Her father told her that almost all of the instructors were purposely putting the volume too low to hear. Eventually, it was mandated that a Peacekeeper was to sit in on every classroom and enforce the screening.

She finds Blight's tape, a thin little disc in a box decorated with his face. Seventeen-year-old Blight once again stares back at her, holding a knife in one hand and a crown in the other, the Seal glistening in the background. His head is shaven.

She skips the Games, though she does watch the Reaping. As the Victor, they show his reaping first – and then it skips to One and plays the rest in descending order. The girl is reaped first. She's somehow even shorter than Asher, a tiny frame with wispy brown hair that's so thin it's almost colorless. She's pale, blotchy in some areas, and when the camera pushes in on her face, you can see the blue of her eyes. That isn't common, not in Seven. _Capitol blood, _her mother used to say._ Maybe the grandfather, great-grandfather. During the Dark Days, local girls used to surrender themselves to Capitol soldiers in exchange for food. That was one of the first things they did, to cut off grain supply coming out from Eleven so the rebels might starve before they could fight. Sometimes, the girl would turn up pregnant. Not often. But sometimes. It happened everywhere during the war, but of course at the time, Seven was so homogenous that you would know what happened when you saw those eyes. You wouldn't have to guess. _

Johanna watches the girl's ashen face and wonders if a Capitol cousin of hers was glad when she died.

Blight takes the stage moments later. He looks like a giant standing next to her. He is solemn.

When the tape finally arrives at the Tour, she watches intently. Blight's escort, a slight man with silver lips, rushes him out onto the stage. It becomes readily apparent that they are in Twelve. The pictures of the tributes glow on the projection behind him. The anthem plays out, and he waits until it is finished to speak.

_I am sorry for your loss._ His face is blank. _I respect your sacrifice for the well-being of Panem. Both Hallifree Cartwright and Niels Donner fought very bravely and embodied the strength of your District. I am humbled to have faced such honorable and courageous tributes. _

This is repeated throughout every District. Only the names change, though the speech – and monotone – remain the same. His tour is bland. His face is emotionless, even when he is brought to the Districts of the tributes he personally killed. The Tour is boring. After the party, it appears they want nothing more than to leave him alone. She knows this was not an accident.

What a pair, they are. _Behold, the Victors of District Seven, Masters of Being Conveniently Ignored. _


	10. The Piano Player

Ariadne leads her to the truth, always.

That is how she has come to this moment; two days before the beginning of the Tour, before she will be thrust back into the spotlight and hidden behind gowns and glamour and insincere apologies. The only way to survive is to ignore it, to pretend the day will never come, to wait in blissful yet poignant silence of an unchangeable fact.

She has lost the option of feigning innocence, especially in light of what occurred in her Games. Instead, they've decided to present her in glory and elegance, as a Victor at heart, a name and a face which commands both awe and respect. They've come time and time again to drop off different outfits, replace others – the sweet pink getup forgotten and replaced with some sort of shimmering midnight-blue gown, the white lace and olive ribbon removed from her closet to make room for a black-and-silver strapless number that screams of Lucius' knowing touch (he has avoided day-glow neons for the time being, a miracle indeed.) Despite such convenient costumes, Johanna Mason does not wish to hide. She will greet them with the biting force of her anger.

It is seven-thirty. Blight has warned that the prep team will arrive at nine. He promised to show up before then. He _has _to show up before then, if he doesn't want to arrive to the sight of a kitchen knife in Julia Cassius' neck. He might be a bit disappointed, although prep teams _are_ a dime a dozen, but she thinks of the gravity of Lucius' frizzy pink rage and feels that it might be better not to take the chance.

She looks back at the bed. Ariadne's slight frame looks like a sailboat in the middle of an open ocean, a fan of bloodred tresses splayed out across her pillow. Her skin is milk in the lamplight.

She looks like her mother, Passopa. She's long gone, of course, beaten to death by Peacekeepers years ago. Ariadne was thirteen years old.

They were all forced to witness it in the town commons. Instructors were marched out of the school to watch. The Head Peacekeeper, Septus Bare of District Two, commanded the presence of the Mayor, a young Donner Silvus. He had been appointed by the Capitol just six months before, a reward for his avid scholarship and wealthy family connections. He was barely thirty, and his wife Natalia had very recently given birth to their first daughter. Peacekeepers manhandled him out into the commons. He tried to persuade Septus Bare to speak with him alone, but he was weak and unsure and young. He was instead grabbed by the shirt collar and threatened into silence. So he stood and watched, just like the rest of them.

Passopa and her husband were tied to a post in the middle of the square, both of them. Hands bound with ropes, they bowed their heads and rested on bloodied knees. It was a sunless day. Her hair was so red it practically glowed. _Passopa Jay and Dannel Deucalion, Criminals and Traitors. It appears that illegal border trade is something of a common crime in this District. Allow me to show to you all the degree of tolerance with which this matter will be treated. _

They were scourged and whipped. Johanna had been passing through the Square and was forced by Peacekeepers to stop and bear witness. She recognized Ariadne a few paces in front of her, at inner edge of the crowd. The girl with the red hair, the girl in her music class. She was the only piano player in the whole school. Her hands were delicate works of art, fingers like small dancers, flitting across the keys. Johanna could watch her play for hours.

They had spoken a few times, bits and pieces of conversation in between the monotony of their own lives.

"I like it when you play." She had said.

Ariadne had looked away. "I like it when you watch."

And then she watched them flog the girl's parents, abuse them until their screams were mere wretches and detached breaths, hard and strained and empty, until the red of Passopa's hair did not rival the red of the blood, until they were reduced from human beings to mutilated, writhing animals. Until they were bludgeoned by the hilt of the whip, until they were dead, she watched, Donner watched, and between the ax girl and the mayor boy, there was nothing they could do.

And when Ariadne Deucalion collapsed, Johanna Mason pushed aggressively through the crowd to catch her. They were all watching her. Septus Bare's white uniform was bloodied up to the elbows. He saw her, saw the girl with the red hair like that of the corpse, and said, _Let that be a lesson to you all. Especially you._

Johanna could have killed him. She looks at Ariadne, asleep in her bed. _Someday._

She remembers watching Donner throw up into his hand. The District waited in silence as he wretched and Bare laughed, as he heaved and Bare roared. As Passopa Jay and Dannel Deucalion lay bloodied and dead in the streets.

In the end, though, Donner Silvus did see to it that Ariadne was allowed to keep her house.

Johanna sits beside her on the bed, strokes her hair, and remembers when she was not so peaceful. When those eyes could barely remain shut for a number of hours, much less a night. When she would hold her with all her strength, if only to save her from the wracking sobs and infinite pain, thick and heavy and dark and dead, to free her from a prison of desolation, from despair, from open arms and curled toes on a high winter roof, closed eyes and frozen tears, _Don't jump, don't jump, don't jump._

_Ariadne, Ariadne, Ariadne, please, please, please. Get down, would you please get down? Would you please come back?_

Johanna leans down, presses a kiss to the top of her head, smells the faint pine-soaked scent of her hair.

_Would you please come inside? Would you come inside with me?_

They were friends first. Or so Johanna would say. Ariadne would insist that they were never friends; that between those notes floating above keystrokes and the soft autumn brown of Johanna's eyes, they were never friends.

The first time they had sex, just two years later, it was because she had wanted to feel something. Her face was red. She was interlocked in some sort of deep ethereal space; Johanna wonders if she remembered that it was _her_ hands on her body, and not some sort of blind abstract touch. Her hands clutched at Johanna's shoulders. _Just do it, just do it, just do it. _She'd arched her back, chin out, teeth gritted, spitting a slur of soft wild noises, physical pleasure and emotional pain, both undeniable, both inescapable. She'd cried in Johanna's arms afterward. She wasn't even sixteen.

Johanna fell in love very quickly.

Ariadne stirs, turning on her side in the direction of Johanna's touch. She runs the back of her hand along Ariadne's cheek.

It has been one and a half years since she was unable to sleep through the night. She no longer goes onto the roof.


	11. Passopa's Dreams, pt 1: The Damned

She is still asleep when Blight arrives; Johanna opens the door at eight-fifteen sharp to reveal her mentor clad in a deep blue suit, decorated with thin pink and red checked stripes. His bow tie bears the same pattern, shoes some sort of engineered leather dyed blue.

"Lucius?"

"Lucius."

She steps aside to allow him to enter. "I had more faith in you, Blight."

He shrugs. "Sometimes it's easier to just let him have his way."

Blight follows her into the living room. Over her shoulder, she throws back, "Now, what do they want with me, exactly?"

He easies himself onto one of the steps of the stairs. "Nothing major. Shooting promos, getting everyone ready for the tour. Essentially, you just need to talk about how excited you are to be coming to the Capitol for Snow's party."

"I don't suppose I just blurt all of this out when they call action."

"No, no. It'll be a live broadcast with Caesar Flickerman. He'll be asking the questions."

She remembers Caesar from her tribute interviews; how she curled in on herself, wide, watering eyes on the floor, lip trembling. He was very gentle with her. She waited until the personal questions to reveal the tears in full. Right when the audience starting to feel their throats tightening - _I'll never get to hug my baby brother again. I'll never get to make a new friend. I'll never get to get married and have a pretty dress and feel pretty. _In the superficial minds of the Capitol, the latter was an especially timeless tragedy. She began to cry softly, and Caesar daintily dried her eyes with his powder-blue handkerchief. _We'll all be rooting for you in the Games. _

He had spoken solemnly. _Ladies and Gentlemen, Johanna Mason of District Seven._

She wonders how he feels now, knowing that he was deceived.

* * *

Lucius has become quite the celebrity.

Leaving the Capitol was almost painful – scratch that, hideously painful, especially after he remembered what he was leaving the attention _for._

District Seven, a trash can with trees.

He is _not_ going to mess this up. He's _not. _All of Panem will be watching – well, the Capitol, at least; he doesn't know exactly _when_ the Districts ever do anything but labor away – and his newfound reputation is riding on his ability to deliver. _Entertain them. Show them the ferocious warrior that captivated them not just a few months ago. Not a survivor. A victor._

He's got it all planned out in his head. Marketing Johanna will be like selling an edgy dress – perhaps the buyer will be intimidated at first, but after a push in the right direction, they'll go tearing it off _anyone's_ back, if just to have it. She's much the same. He would be afraid they'd dislike her uncouth darkness, but somehow in between the ax wounds and fiery one-liners ("Buy a patriotic coffin for your shining fucking career" has been replaying in his head since the games) they have grown to love her intensity. They'll go wild for her. Finnick Odair occupied the lovable-victor niche, and now that's where he's taken up permanent residence. The Capitol does not want a female Finnick. They want a dog that bites.

When he arrives and sees her in her everyday clothes, he sends a dirty look toward Blight (who, to his credit, has actually cooperated with the suit) because apparently _fucking feed her, she looks like a refugee _wasn't clear enough as Johanna still looks like a soldier right out of the Dark Days. He knew it would happen – after all, it happens to all of them. That emaciated look they get after the Games won't just fade away from eating like normal for a while. Then again, it is District Seven, so he doubts they've even _heard_ of a nutritionist.

Just as Cornelia begins barking orders at attendants, Lucius manages to herd Johanna and everyone else upstairs, prep team and equipment and all, and he watches as they undress and preen her, taking off the hair, clipping the fingernails, plucking at her brows. Her whole body is sinewy – muscular, obviously capable of very effective killing, but frail at the same time. She's like a lightweight champion who's been underfed for six weeks. And _really_, didn't he _tell_ her to brush her hair? _Didn't he?_

She shoots Julia a death glare when she rips the last of the hair off Johanna's leg. After they've finished with her, he motions to Casarius to bring in the outfit: an athletic creation, sleeveless shirt and skin-tight pants with padding neatly folded into the stitching, jet-black with scarlet lines running up the sides like the blades of knives. It accents her form, turning _emaciated_ into _slim yet toned_, which is good, considering Capitol patrons probably would prefer to see that she isn't starving to death.

Once they've got her into the outfit and lightly dusted with makeup, they set her up outside of her house – a pile of finely cut prop logs stacked neatly in the front yard, behind a tree. They've set a stump up somewhere in the background. Lucius can't help but laugh at how Blight and Johanna get the same damn look of disdain when they see the logs, as if somehow plastic props are a personal insult to their district. It wouldn't be so funny if it weren't the _same_ expression, but he swears they're mirror images of each other, perfectly united in their indignation. He wonders idly if they're related, and momentarily amuses himself with catty jokes regarding the districts and inbreeding.

He has one of his many set on-set attendants produce an ax - lean and black and sharp, the stripe along the edge of the handle perfectly accenting her outfit. Lucius makes sure it's nicely stuck into one of the logs before they bring her on set, position her with one hand on the axe, the other on her hip, staring at the camera.

"Fierce," he coaches, his smile growing anticipatory as the camera flickers to life to project the countdown.

She rolls her eyes. Blight stands off to the side, just a few paces in front of him, arms crossed. Knowing Blight, he's probably somewhere in between mildly disapproving and unnecessarily worried.

Finally, the camera clicks on, and the show begins.

* * *

Cornelia Lolita _cannot _be human.

Or so Blight thinks as he watches her grin like a hyena as the set materializes, standing with giant sky-blue heels perfectly in line, dress tiny and angular in all the wrong (right?) places. Her hair is about three feet high, magenta interwoven with silver and pink strands of lace. She's as ridiculous as Lucius, if in a more controlled fashion. Blight has been to the Capitol several times (more than he'd like to admit) so he is able to notice that she is in fact attempting to calm her appearance for the sake of the district, and appreciates it for the small amount of sentiment she most likely intended.

Her schedule has been fastidiously groomed to maximize time and minimize effort. Despite her eccentricities, Cornelia does her job, something Blight is thankful for. That's how they'll get through the tour. She'll manage their affairs, Lucius will pluck and trim their image, and Blight will take care of Johanna. If they can do that, then they'll come out of it alive, luckily unscathed, hopefully ignored.

He can't help but cringe at the scene they've created. She's finally in her natural setting, and they've managed to make it as fake and prescribed as possible. After all, they're from the Capitol. And what else does the Capitol do, besides destroy originals to produce plastic copies?

Caesar comes on the screen, still blue and white and ridiculously excited for something ridiculously overrated.

He laughs, and you can hear the Capitol audience cheering in the background. "I cannot believe it! Johanna Mason, finally gracing our screens again! Johanna, it's wonderful to see you!" As he begins to settle into the interview, the crowd quiets. "How is it, being back home?"

Johanna smirks, but he sees how it doesn't reach her eyes and knows that it's not genuine. He can feel the heat behind it, and wants to warn her what the repercussions of disobedience truly are, especially during something that makes this much money for this many of the Capitol's wealthy elite.

"Gee. Well, Caesar, it certainly beats the arena." It could have been a joke, but the tone is all off. The implications behind it are too heavy: the horrors of her games, the bitterness she harbors, perhaps even alluding to the kills she made.

Caesar understands it as well, but he's too good at his job to allow it to show. "I sure hope so." He smiles humorously. "After all, I didn't think the Gamemakers did _that_ fantastic of a job on the arena." The Capitol citizens laugh behind him, a blur white teeth and red nails.

Johanna snaps the ax out of the wood, and the obvious plasticity of the prop shows itself in full when the force allows it to come apart like a marshmallow.

The camera instinctively follows her movement. She looks down and smiles. "Oops." She paces toward the camera, swinging the axe back and forth merrily as she walks, smirking all the while. "Well, Caesar, you know my favorite part of the arena was? That cliff, right smack in the middle of the place. Toward the back, you remember. And how it managed to rip every single one of my fingernails clean off my hands when I had to scale it to avoid being stabbed to death. That was fun. They stuck me with new ones, of course, as you can see." She holds out her hand, and the camera zooms in to focus. "I like them. They don't _quite_ match the new pieces, but they're just barely growing in. After all, grafts are grafts."

For the first time in his glamorous existence, Caesar is caught off guard. "You certainly displayed some serious persistence." He turns to the crowd for support. "Didn't she?" The roar certainly reaffirms their pleasure with the turnout of the Games, but Blight can see it does nothing but to exacerbate her anger.

Caesar continues. "How are your family and friends, now that you have returned as a Victor?"

"How? Oh, grand. Amazing, this difference between having a dead child and a live one." She smiles honestly, suddenly returning to a picture of loyalty and hope. "Of course, I think all families in all Districts are perfectly happy to make such a large sacrifice for the country. In fact, there are even families that have given two or three children as Victors in successive years. I believe two fraternal twins were reaped from ten a few years ago. What an even larger glory." Her tone is perfectly on point, but the statement is so outlandish that it forces an argument even larger than the idea she displays.

She's truly done it; proven her talent as a skilled manipulator while sending a personal insult to the very justification on which the Games rest. She has projected her anger, she has met them in the field of social battle with her words as axes. But it will take an intelligent audience (smarter than the common Capitol citizen, if Cornelia's vacant expression is anything to go by) to truly understand the heavy undertones of her seemingly prescribed and scripted melody of deference to their government. Their government, who are even more astute to insult than rebellion; their government, who tolerate nothing, who attack without warning, who kill without discrimination.

And then he catches a piece of red light glinting off the sun glare, from an upstairs window shrouded in shadow, a sliver of color emerges – a girl, a girl with bright red hair like that of a traitor he once knew, long ago.

_Passopa._

For a moment, he thinks to follow, but no; it is only his mind, playing tricks on him once more.

* * *

When the interview itself is done, Cornelia allows them to project the footage they shot before their initial departure from the Victor's Village, all of those weeks ago – Johanna greeting her new home, Johanna chopping firewood in her backyard, Johanna in her living room with a book and a glass of cider, and finally, Johanna's twin diamond-edged hatchets hanging from the wall in an ornamented glass box.

_Those aren't decorations_, she'd protested. No one had listened.

Blight tries to go to her afterward; tries to warn her. _Listen. You can't do what you just did on the Tour. They might excuse this, talk themselves out of it, ignore it – they may not even notice it. But they watch during the Tour. They're always watching then, and everything you do could be grounds for drastic action. _He doesn't specify exactly what he means by the latter statement, but thinks much later of Passopa and wishes he had. _You need to bore and disinterest them. You need to repel them. You need to finish this and let it sink without a word. That's how you come home._

Her last words cut into him still. _I thought I already came home, Blight._

That night, he sits in his house, alone. The next day, they will be shuffled onto the train by Cornelia Lolita and powdered and dressed by Lucius Sulla and she will be given cards to read, and he will convince her to read them. That was the agreement. And at the end, if Lucius is still correct, if the rumors are still true, then he will be notified. And so will she. And there will be nothing to be done; it will have been finished. She will have been bought and paid for.

The Tour is their last hope.

He turns to his music player, an old thing given to him by his father, and inserts a tiny disk into the slot. It whirrs and he can feel the thing hum under his hand. It has been passed down in his family from father to son for generations, one of the last relics of the old regime. Displayed upon the front in crude ink is the title, _Sony_, and although he knows that whatever or whoever _Sony_ was, they no longer exist, he wonders what they were to a people long past.

The tune begins to play; the Marriage of Figaro by a man called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a composer from centuries and centuries ago. He was from a country called Austria, so said his father, and was considered one of the greatest composers of all time. This particular tune is the overture, and it rings of finality and hope.

He thinks again of Passopa Jay; of the bright red hair and those startling eyes, of her soft smile and eager lips and apple cheeks. He imagines her in the forests once more, chasing him through branches and hiding behind tree trunks, the way they would run off together in those cold autumn mornings of his childhood, so far into his past he feels as though it is no more real to him than a hazy fever dream. His love for her, gone too; gone in an instant, gone forever. He remembers her at eleven, with chin-length tresses, at seventeen, lithe and tall and built like an archer; at twenty-two, with bitter eyes and a bright smile, welcoming him back from the Games without a word, with open arms and a cup of hot tea and a blanket.

_Oh, Blight. _She would say. _You'll always be the same to me._

And then Deucalion, with his save-the-world mentality and his rash convictions, as though smuggling illegally transported food across the border would actually help anyone. Why didn't she understand the need to go unnoticed? Why couldn't she remain without attention? After all, nothing would change. Nothing would ever change.

Nothing did change, nothing but her. He convinced her, he poisoned her, he had his tendrils in her so deep that not even reason could pull her away from him and his childish notions and stupid ideas. _If they can seize me from my home, put me in an arena, and allow me to murder whoever I want, and be murdered by whomever feels the urge – for no crime but the existence of my name in a bowl - what is to stop them from seeking vengeance for a real crime? What is to save you from torture, from a life as an avox, from death?_ She would have none of it.

And on a cloudy day, she and Deucalion lost the game they were so eager to play; he wasn't there to see it; rather he was in the Capitol, begging sponsors for the lives of his tributes – long dead, hopeless from the beginning – only to return to a corpse.

The bodies were Capitol property, and he was allowed to view hers but not claim it or bury it. Not as her next-of-kin, not as her friend, not even as Blight the Victor, though he did try that route. It led nowhere.

Eventually they were burned, as the corpses of traitors are, and the ashes were disposed of. That red hair. Those bright eyes. That lithe form. That smile. Gone.

The pain was unbearable, unmistakable, frightening in its intensity. He felt forever lost, and forever gone, and that's when those memories turned to haze, when his bright eyes went dark, when the world looked as though a shadow had been cast upon it, when the _society_ of Panem seemed no better than the thick open wilds of hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the deep dark recesses of human history, when a whip seemed no different than the jaws of a mighty predator, when he wished one would come swallow him and swallow him whole. _Passopa._

She was his only friend. She was all he believed in.

And then upon that shattered conviction stood a girl with twin hatchets, and a boy with a sword, and when she cut him open the shadow lifted, and when she kicked him down that primal hopelessness lifted like clouds and he was weightless and grounded at once.

Her name is Johanna Mason, and that is who he believes in now.

But still, that ache.

_Passopa. _

It is even worse, then, that Deucalion's ill-fated dreams could tear a rift between them so deep that even after thirteen years, he never knew about the baby.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE  
**

For constant updates, notifications and some backstage info on what's to come, go ahead and follow goodwhiteshark on Tumblr. This week, I'll be taking questions about the story, the characters, Johanna's past, and what I've got planned in the future. Thanks so much for reading, and please remember to review!

Thank you all.

-L


	12. Passopa's Dreams, pt 2: Grandchildren

Johanna's spiked tresses are matted against her forehead as she heaves, flat on her back. Ariadne stretches beside her, the sheets falling off her cream-colored form like the waves of an ocean crashing against marble shores. Her hair falls behind her back, neither beautiful nor elegant, rather appealing in a raw sort of way, tangled and tousled and fringed. She draws her legs together again and turns on her side, facing Johanna.

"Tired so soon? Your endurance is pitiful."

Johanna smirks, eyes wandering to Ariadne's chest. "We've had this contest before, and if I remember correctly, _you_ lost."

Ariadne flops over, smiling. "That's how the neighbors met you."

"That's how the neighbors learned my name."

"Your name is 'don't stop'?"

"No," Johanna turns, swings an arm across her body, and calls out in perfect mimicry of Ariadne's shrieks, "It's _Jo! Jo! Don't stop! Jo-oh!"_

"You're a very dangerous creature."

Johanna digs into the nook just under her jaw and begins to softly suck, dragging her teeth down Ariadne's neck as she begins to plant a trial of kisses leading to her collarbone.

As she stops, Ariadne raises an eyebrow. "Shall you venture no further?"

"Not today," She opens her arms to cradle Ariadne's body. "There isn't time."

"The train."

"Yeah, the train. Noon."

Ariadne sighs. "Noon." She rests her head on Johanna's chest, feeling the rise and fall as though she is the mast of a giant ship, dipping and surging along in a calm afternoon ocean.

"Do you ever think you want kids someday?"

Johanna opens her mouth to answer, then thinks better of it. "Do you?"

"Yes," Ariadne admits. "I think I do. Can't you imagine? A home birth in a windy spring morning, the joy betraying the pain… his first birthday. Teaching him to speak. His first word. You, taking him out to the woods. I could show him how to paint, and weave, and read stories, and eventually he would go to school and come home with his own stories."

"He?"

"A boy, with golden hair and eyes like…" she waits. "Like the sea."

Johanna strokes her back with one hand, tracing circles on her palm with the other. She asks softly, "What's his name?"

"Dannel." Ariadne answers. "For my father."

* * *

Blight sits again in his living room, listening to the Sony play softly in the background. It is Beethoven's 5th, this time, and it speaks of impending doom.

Cornelia has given him a copy of her schedule. They are headed first to Twelve. The Capitol sits like the gallows at the end of their road.

He wants it all to change. It won't.

* * *

Their goodbye was not public, but her departure was. Ariadne chose not to see her off amongst the staring crowds and Peacekeeper presence. Johanna didn't want her to.

It is her family who wait with them on the platform; Asher, swaddled in his little coat and boots, John much the same, their father's face as stony and firm as the mountains in the distance. Her mother, like Ariadne, chose to say her goodbyes privately. She'd clasped her hand tightly. _You are more than what they will make of you. _

She hugs Asher first, kneeling, as he buries his face into her shoulder. The tears fall easily, as Johanna suspects they always will. Finally, she must draw herself from his clinging embrace. Gripping his tiny gloved hands, she promises, "When I get back, we can rebuild the Tree, okay? Just like new."

He nods, and she takes it as his acceptance that she must go. Johanna pulls his hat down over his ears, just for good measure, and plants a kiss on his forehead. She is faintly reminded of the son Ariadne described, but she knows that Asher Mason will be almost a man grown before the next Quarter Quell. He will one day grow into his grace, and for the vast majority of their lives, he will be her friend.

John stands awkwardly next to their father. She reaches her hand to him and he takes it, drawing closer.

"I know that you don't like me very much right now, and you're still not sure who I've become since I left. But let me know when you're ready, and we'll talk." He nods. It is all she could hope to receive. They may share the same face, but John is not Asher, and he will not cry for her. He was born resolute.

Then, her father. His words are simple: "Remember where home is, no matter where they take you." Finally, he draws her into a hug. "I'll see you in a few weeks."

The train, like the last, is filled with an assortment of small cakes, cookies, teas, juices, ciders, spirits, and other delicacies of the sort. Sparkling glass bottles hold several different pastel-colored alcohols, of which Lucius tastes all.

"Are you getting _drunk_?" Cornelia quips, her voice rising at the end. Johanna sits with Blight next to the window, staring out at the passing fields of cows and other livestock. According to him, this is Ten.

She remembers the boy from Ten. The Career she butchered slit his throat. What a miserable existence he must have led.

"I'm not getting drunk." Lucius insists. "For the love of Panem, do you really think I can't handle my spirits?"

"I have heard stories about you, Lucius Sulla. They say things about you and your bottled mistress." Cornelia snatches one of the bottles out of his grasp, which he then replaces with another.

Looking down at the bottle, he caresses it lovingly. "Do you here that, _mademoiselle?_ We are found out. Our affair must end. Tonight is our last night." With that, he refills his glass. She has never seen Lucius drunk, but if this is it, Johanna certainly prefers him that way. Watching him drain the glass, Cornelia grabs the last of his bottles and stalks out to the next car.

"Blight, good man, you won't reveal our secret."

Blight looks back at him. "Of course not, old friend."

"Friend! Old friend, of course. The girl needs a friend. Blight, when we finally return to _real_ civilization, you'll introduce her to Finnick Odair, won't you? They'll just positively adore each other."

"Oh, Lucius," Blight chuckles. "Cornelia is going to destroy you."

He sighs. "I always get drunk before we're dragged to Twelve."

Johanna's brow furrows. "Why?"

Lucius laughs. "I suppose you wouldn't know, considering the things they teach you in those District schools." He takes another drink. "Twelve isn't really a _place_. Never was. When citizens turn eighteen, they're thrown into the mines, if they don't starve before that. In the inner town, they're mostly alright, getting by. The kids along the edge, though – it's like a district within a district." He pours more pink liquor into his glass, chuckling at himself. "Twelve and a Half, they should call it. It's a microcosm of famine and poverty within a district of famine and poverty. Amazing, such a thing exists. They've all got this dark hair, olive-looking people, not like Eleven, more of a coffee-color – like trees. Grey eyes, too, every last one of them. Can look right through you. All the same. Almost more so than Seven."

Johanna's eyes narrow. "We're not starving in Seven."

"Not yet." He looks to Blight, then the window. "Everyone starves eventually."

* * *

Johanna dreams of that spring day, in the bed, the cry of a child just as dawn breaks.

The midwife, faceless, hands her a bundle. Ariadne leans back in the bed, eyes half-closed, her face pacified with a look of pure content that betrays the pain which tore her to shreds through the sleepless night. Johanna looks down at the child in her arms – a son, so says the midwife – covered in wet blonde curls. She sees the curves and lines in his features and knows that he will look everything like Ariadne, and for that, she smiles.

He grows quickly. She returns from the woods on a hot summer day, axe in hand, to find Ariadne with the baby on her hip, organizing paint brushes into piles. Colors are strewn about the room. Across a white canvas, leaning up against the spiral staircase, are a list of names painted in red. _John, Anne, John, Asher, Johanna, Dannel, Ariadne, Passopa. _

Ariadne runs a brush under the water, and it covers the white marble in bloodred streaks. "So he can remember us, after we're gone."

"I don't think he'll forget, do you?"

"I do," she admits. "Sometimes."

* * *

Her mind shuttles her into Twelve in a burst of flame.

She stands on the stage, Blight behind her. A sea of faces emerges before her, dark hair and gray eyes. One girl stands out among the rest, staring at her with accusing, indignant eyes. She hears Lucius' voice in the back of her mind. _Can look right through you._

Johanna approaches the microphone. "Your tributes are dead."

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Thank you all so much for reading. Please remember to review (the box is just down there) and follow goodwhiteshark on Tumblr for live updates and extras.

-L


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